Monday, July 31, 2006

The weekend was rather pedestrian.

I've already forgotten the weekend's exact timetable but we did grocery shopping and hit Target early Saturday morning. We'd taken offspring #2 clothes shopping on Friday evening. It was an expensive weekend certainly. I bought a mystery at Borders on Saturday, Flowers Stained by Moonlight, told in epistolary fashion. On Friday, I had picked up a serious textbook-style reader on the topic of spiritual theology, Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church. And at home, waiting for me was a DVD set of Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, ordered from Amazon. Plenty of entertainment for the weekend.

Sunday was the slow day. No church because everyone was moving -- in fact -- slowly. Offspring #2 had specifically requested that he be allowed to sleep in since Saturday at Friendly's was a late night. Spouse didn't sleep well due to the heat.

Reading in Past Week:

The Best of C.L. Moore - Two outstanding stories - Black Thirst is a Northwest Smith story that protests emphasis being placed on a woman's beauty, simultaneously breeding out all courage and intelligence. No Woman Born is a story involving a female entertainer, burned badly in a theater fire, who has allowed her (organic) brain to be placed in a (mechanical body). Can she adapt? The male scientist and her male manager have doubts that her essential beauty will shine forth, supplanting the image of a robot entertainer in the mind of her public, and yet she proves both wrong in a unique fashion.

His Majesty's Dragon - Excellent entertainment story of dragon and captain-rider (Think Russll Crowe in Master and Commander and then put him on the back of a dignified, intelligent Chinese Dragon). No particular theme or depth of message, but well-paced fun and emotionally satisfying. There's a point where an injured dragon dies that causes a bit of a lump in the throat.

Upcoming Week:

Newletter article to be written on product developmentOffspring #1 returns home from his Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)

Major news stories this week were the war in the Middle East (guys, we're past the so-called crisis phase; this is a war. Call it that) and the heat wave across the country.